Friday, July 30, 1943. Stolen secrets and the Atomic Bomb.

France renounced its Chinese concessions in Shanghai.  It had held them since 1849.

Igor Kurchalov, Soviet physicist, informed Molotov that stolen secrets from the US had much advanced the Soviet nuclear weapons program.

The Luftwaffe carried out the first flight of the Arado Ar 234, the first jet engined bomber.  Only small numbers would be produced, and reconnaissance proved to be its primary role.

Marie-Louise Giraud, age 38, became the last person woman executed by the guillotine.  Her sentence was carried out by the German occupation government and was for performing abortions.

Monday, July 30, 1923. Harding in grave condition.

President Harding was reported to e in "grave" condition, which indeed he was.

Summer life, of course, went on for many, which included camps for some.

And protests for others.

And Reserve training, as in these men from D.C.'s Naval Reserve were doing.

The British Empire claimed the Ross Dependency in Antarctica and expressed a desire that, save for some territory belonging to Chile, Argentina and France, the Empire should come to own the entire continent.

The Dependency today is claimed by New Zealand, a claim recognized only by other countries claiming Antarctic lands.

Blog Mirror: Hageman Says Gender Affirming Treatements are Sexual Labotomies.

 A recent Cowboy State Daily article on a comment by Harriet Hageman:

Hageman Says Gender-Affirming Treatments Are Sexual Lobotomies | Your Wyoming News Source (cowboystatedaily.com)

I find myself cringing when I agree with something Hageman says, as she has so far been a real Trumpite and came into her position by turning on her old political friend, Liz Cheney.  Cheney was absolutely correct, and stood for the law, on the issue of Trump and his subversion of democracy.

Hageman's comparison here, however, is quite correct.

This shows the extent to which issues like this really serve as red meat for the populist right.  The left stands in wonder on how so many in the country suddenly seem willing to force their views on society even if it means trampling democracy.  Having used the courts to trample democracy for decades, and coming to the point where, in their minds, mutilation of children in the name of transgenderism, something that may very well not even exists, helps explain how we got to the scary point we are now at.

On G. K. Chesterton and his Anti Semitism.

The Catholic blogosphere has been having a war over G. K. Chesterton, the late English writer and polymath.  Some of it, were I not so tired and worn out, would be heartbreaking, as former fans of his, particularly converts, have discovered his anti-Semitic views and come around to condemning him. At the same time, hard right wing Catholics, whom are I supposing a separate interlocking circle that crosses over into the Trads and Rad Trads, but don't include all of those bodies by any means (I suspect most of them do not know who Chesterton is) may be over adopting him.

All this exists, moreover, in the bizarre context of our times in which the left doesn't see a biological or social construct that it doesn't want to attack, which makes in some ways Chesterton a perfect man for our times, as he warned of so much of this.  That's why, to our recent surprise, we saw, and it caused a lot of comment, Giorgia Meloni quote the English writer to the effect:

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.

She stated that in support of her hard right conservative views.

A lot of this debate over Chesterton, both from the right and the left, really misses the point, in my view.

Whenever dealing with a great man, we have to ask ourselves a series of questions.  Ironically, in some ways, we have to ask one that has been recently examined by the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom. "Was he a saint?"  But beyond that, do we require great mean with huge thoughts to be saints?  And do we always require them to be right in order to consider these ideas?

In some ways, this is frankly why ancient philosophers get so much more of a pass than modern ones.  We don't even think much of their private lives, really.  We know that Socrates was married at least once, to Xanthippe, and might have had a second wife as well. We also know that Xanthippe might have been 40 years younger than Socrates, which would cause all sorts of Twitter twittering today, but we just don't think of it.  And he's a philosopher that we know a lot about.

Chesterton, on the other hand, we know boatloads about, as he's a relatively recent figure.  His cause for canonization, which failed, resulted in all sorts of commentary about him in various forms, including some people who claimed he couldn't be a saint as he was fat, so therefore he must be a glutton, and an "alcoholic", based on his exhibiting the typical English pub culture of the time.  Much more serious, however, are his anti-Semitic utterances.

So let's start there.

They exist.

Now, I'm not able to really go into detail on them, as unlike true Chestertonians, I've read very little of Chesterton.  Like a lot of people who fit broadly into his fan base, so to speak, I've read the various pithy quotes you are able to find, and up until a recent bizarre Twitter episode, I hadn't read any of the anti-Semitic ones.  I'd heard them referenced, and excused, but I'm not going to try to do that as they seem to go beyond what we might expect, although at the same time a person can't really deny that there is evidence that cuts the other way as well.  The year following his death, for example, you find American Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise, making this comment:

Indeed, I was a warm admirer of Gilbert Chesterton. Apart from his delightful art and his genius in many directions, he was, as you know, a great religionist . . . I deeply respected him. When Hitlerism came, he was one of the first to speak out with all the directness and frankness of a great and unabashed spirit. Blessing to his memory!

That's hard to square with the claim that Chesterton was an unabashed anti Semite.  In contrast, some point out that Chesterton said something like there was some good in Hitlerism and some of that was in Hitler himself.  He both condemned Nazism while saying that part of the reason that it came about was because of a "Jewish problem", a fairly astounding claim from an educated man who should have known better, although that was a fairly widespread belief in Europe at the time, and it surprisingly still has much more retention in Europe today, in spite of everything, than it should.  In some ways, Chesterton on this topic gives us a really odd example of a person really forcibly trying to take the middle ground by advocating both sides of it, on a topic in which there really is no middle ground.

But here's the thing.

Having bad, even horrible, views, doesn't discredit your other views which are not so tainted, and they don't define the person unless the person adopts them to the extent that they do.

Hitler was a tremendous opponent of smoking.  He hated it.  He was right to hate it, but beyond anything else, he hated cultures that he regarded as non-Germanic, with the Jews, followed by the Slavs hated to the point of murder. That's why Hitler and his followers are defined by their murderous beliefs, and not by their opposition to tobacco or their construction of the autobahn.

In contrast, I suppose, Thomas Jefferson wrote profoundly on the rights of man.  At the same time, he was shacked up with his dead wife's half sister, who was an enslaved black woman. The relationship started, following his wife's death, when the slave was quite young, probably still in her teens. That's really icky.  The children of that illicit union, we'd note, were held in bondage as well, which is exceedingly weird.

That latter example gives us an example closer to what we find with Chesterton.  Jefferson was a brilliant man, and wrote in opposition to slavery, none of which kept him from having an illicit unmarried long-lasting and deeply strange relationship to his sister-in-law.  Should we discount his writings?

Probably not.

And here I guess is the uneasy measure.  People are full of vices, some of them exceedingly serious.  Some people let their hatreds and vices define them.  That is what they come to stand for, by their own actions.  Hitler's perverted view of German superiority defined his political party and what it stood for, and came to define what Germany of the 30s and 40s stood for.  Lenin and Stalin's malevolent view of  the "class struggle", which lead to mass murder, came to define them.  

Franklin Roosevelt's long-lasting extramarital affair did not come to define him, however. And while he's not now regarded as a good President, Warren G. Harding's two affairs have not come to define him.  Actor Pat Morita's alcoholism did not define him.  Jimi Hendrix's drug consumption, which helped kill him, didn't define him.  Caravaggio's murdering a man over a tennis match has not come to define him.  Django Reinhardt's alcohol consumption diminished his abilities over his lifetime, but that has not come to define him, nor has Richard Burton's alcoholism defined him.  Churchill was known to have made utterances sympathetic to Mussolini prior to World War Two, and even after World War Two Churchill made a surprising remark about the rise of Hitler, which he warned against, having made sense in the context of desperate Germany of the late 1920s and early 1930s.

It's problematic, of course, when we are faced with a character like Chesterton, who serous failing was in print and therefore not really possible to ignore and not legitimately subject to being excused.  Nor are that a self-destructive personal vice, like alcoholism.  It's much closer to Jefferson's bedroom hypocrisy.  It's different from that, of course, in that Chesterton's views were openly stated, whereas Jefferson's actions were kept hidden.  A person could debate which was worse, I suppose, in that context, but for a brilliant writer, that's all the more problematic.

Some of it was the context of the times and culture, to be sure.  Anti-Semitism is deeply ingrained in European culture and remains pretty potent today.  But Chesterton actually stood principally against his culture, which makes this failing more difficult to accept.

So where to land?

Like Caravaggio's paintings, his works are too valuable to ignore.  The adoption of them by fringe elements of the far right today, including the far right in religious circles, does not change that, and indeed chances are high that Chesterton would levy his sharp tongue against many of them today.  It means, however, that he's a flawed hero, and in at least one serious way, which makes him a pretty typical hero at that.  There are, to my layman's eyes, reasons not to canonize him which are both theological and political, none of which is to say that he did not find salvation.  Indeed, we ought to be careful about our own souls, with many of the critics and readers of all kinds no doubt, like Jefferson, harboring secret or open vices.

So the troubling writings should not be excused or diminished.  Not everything the man said or did was right.  But by the same token, the writings of Jefferson's pen in aid of the infant United States are not rendered a nullity by his long-running bizarre home behavior.  The character of the works must be measured in the main, with those that fail being noted as failures, even evil failures, which does not mean that the rest cannot be considered.  It also does not mean that the man can be adopted in the main, safely, for those with modern radical causes.

The key may be the question whether the failings define the man, or are a horrific exception to his definition.  Hitler's failings defined him.  Jefferson's did not.  Chesterton's, serious though they were, do not seem to define him either, which is not to excuse them.

Thursday, July 29, 1943 Coca-Cola to the front.

June 29, 1943 – During WWII General Eisenhower Requisitions Ten Portable Coca-Cola Bottling Plants

Bringing a taste of home, I guess.

The Japanese evacuated Kiska.  This was made possible by the U.S. Navy being diverted by a radar signal that appeared to be a relief convoy for the island.

The United Kingdom announced that women under the age of 50 were required to register for war work.

Boeing B-17F  “Alice from Dallas” returning from a raid on Warnemunde on this day in 1943.

Sunday, July 29, 1923. Ptomaine poisoning?

President Harding's physician reported his condition had worsened and that the rest of the Voyage of Understanding was cancelled.  He was checked into a hospital in San Francisco.

The press was still reporting the incident as an instance of food poisoning.

Benito Mussolini received thousands of letters congratulating him on his 40th birthday.

A German Communist called Red Sunday failed to bring out much of a turnout.

A map which says about all you need to know about UFOs.

 

Hmmm, apparently they only visit English speaking places?

Blog Mirror: Profile of a Ranch Wife

 

Profile of a Ranch Wife

Wednesday, July 28, 1943. Addressing Italy.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower made a radio broadcast to now non Fascist, but not democratic, Italy, stating:

You can have peace immediately, and peace under the honorable conditions which our governments have already offered you," said Eisenhower. "We are coming to you as liberators ... As you have already seen in Sicily, our occupation will be mild and beneficient ... The ancient liberties and traditions of your country will be restored.

Franklin Roosevelt also addressed the American population on the Italian surrender in a fireside chat, stating:

My Fellow Americans:

Over a year and a half ago I said this to the Congress: "The militarists in Berlin, and Rome and Tokyo started this war, but the massed angered forces of common humanity will finish it."

Today that prophecy is in the process of being fulfilled. The massed, angered forces of common humanity are on the march. They are going forward -- on the Russian front, in the vast Pacific area, and into Europe -- converging upon their ultimate objectives: Berlin and Tokyo.

I think the first crack in the Axis has come. The criminal, corrupt Fascist regime in Italy is going to pieces.

The pirate philosophy of the Fascists and the Nazis cannot stand adversity. The military superiority of the United Nations -- on sea and land, and in the air -- has been applied in the right place and at the right time.

Hitler refused to send sufficient help to save Mussolini. In fact, Hitler's troops in Sicily stole the Italians' motor equipment, leaving Italian soldiers so stranded that they had no choice but to surrender. Once again the Germans betrayed their Italian allies, as they had done time and time again on the Russian front and in the long retreat from Egypt, through Libya and Tripoli, to the final surrender in Tunisia.

And so Mussolini came to the reluctant conclusion that the "jig was up"; he could see the shadow of the long arm of justice.

But he and his Fascist gang will be brought to book, and punished for their crimes against humanity. No criminal will be allowed to escape by the expedient of "resignation."

So our terms to Italy are still the same as our terms to Germany and Japan --"unconditional surrender."

We will have no truck with Fascism in any way, in any shape or manner. We will permit no vestige of Fascism to remain.

Eventually Italy will reconstitute herself. It will be the people of Italy who will do that, choosing their own government in accordance with the basic democratic principles of liberty and equality. In the meantime, the United Nations will not follow the pattern set by Mussolini and Hitler and the Japanese for the treatment of occupied countries --the pattern of pillage and starvation.

We are already helping the Italian people in Sicily. With their cordial cooperation, we are establishing and maintaining security and order -- we are dissolving the organizations which have kept them under Fascist tyranny -- we are providing them with the necessities of life until the time comes when they can fully provide for themselves.

Indeed, the people in Sicily today are rejoicing in the fact that for the first time in years they are permitted to enjoy the fruits of their own labor(s) -- they can eat what they themselves grow, instead of having it stolen from them by the Fascists and the Nazis.

In every country conquered by the Nazis and the Fascists, or the Japanese militarists, the people have been reduced to the status of slaves or chattels.

It is our determination to restore these conquered peoples to the dignity of human beings, masters of their own fate, entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

We have started to make good on that promise.

I am sorry if I step on the toes of those Americans who, playing party politics at home, call that kind of foreign policy "crazy altruism" and "starry-eyed dreaming."

Meanwhile, the war in Sicily and Italy goes on. It must go on, and will go on, until the Italian people realize the futility of continuing to fight in a lost cause -- a cause to which the people of Italy never gave their wholehearted approval and support.

It's a little over a year since we planned the North African campaign. It is six months since we planned the Sicilian campaign. I confess that I am of an impatient disposition, but I think that I understand and that most people understand the amount of time necessary to prepare for any major military or naval operation. We cannot just pick up the telephone and order a new campaign to start the next week.

For example, behind the invasion forces in (of) North Africa, the invasion forces that went out of North Africa, were thousands of ships and planes guarding the long, perilous sea lanes, carrying the men, carrying the equipment and the supplies to the point of attack. And behind all these were the railroad lines and the highways here back home that carried the men and the munitions to the ports of embarkation -- there were the factories and the mines and the farms here back home that turned out the materials -- there were the training camps here back home where the men learned how to perform the strange and difficult and dangerous tasks which were to meet them on the beaches and in the deserts and in the mountains.

All this had to be repeated, first in North Africa and then in (in the attack on) Sicily. Here the factor -- in Sicily -- the factor of air attack was added -- for we could use North Africa as the base for softening up the landing places and lines of defense in Sicily, and the lines of supply in Italy.

It is interesting for us to realize that every flying fortress that bombed harbor installations at, for example, Naples, bombed it from its base in North Africa, required 1,110 gallons of gasoline for each single mission, and that this is the equal of about 375 "A" ration tickets -- enough gas to drive your car five times across this continent. You will better understand your part in the war -- and what gasoline rationing means -- if you multiply this by the gasoline needs of thousands of planes and hundreds of thousands of jeeps, and trucks and tanks that are now serving overseas.

I think that the personal convenience of the individual, or the individual family back home here in the United States will appear somewhat less important when I tell you that the initial assault force on Sicily involved 3,000 ships which carried 160,000 men -- Americans, British, Canadians and French -- together with 14,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, and 1,800 guns. And this initial force was followed every day and every night by thousands of reinforcements.

The meticulous care with which the operation in Sicily was planned has paid dividends. (For) Our casualties in men, in ships and material have been low -- in fact, far below our estimate.

And all of us are proud of the superb skill and courage of the officers and men who have conducted and are conducting those (this) operations. The toughest resistance developed on the front of the British Eighth Army, which included the Canadians. But that is no new experience for that magnificent fighting force which has made the Germans pay a heavy price for each hour of delay in the final victory. The American Seventh Army, after a stormy landing on the exposed beaches of Southern Sicily, swept with record speed across the island into the capital at Palermo. For many of our troops this was their first battle experience, but they have carried themselves like veterans.

And we must give credit for the coordination of the diverse forces in the field, and for the planning of the whole campaign, to the wise and skillful leadership of General Eisenhower. Admiral Cunningham, General Alexander and Sir Marshal Tedder have been towers of strength in handling the complex details of naval and ground and air activities.

You have heard some people say that the British and the Americans can never get along well together -- you have heard some people say that the Army and the Navy and the Air Forces can never get along well together -- that real cooperation between them is impossible. Tunisia and Sicily have given the lie, once and for all, to these narrow-minded prejudices.

The dauntless fighting (spirit) of the British people in this war has been expressed in the historic words and deeds of Winston Churchill -- and the world knows how the American people feel about him.

Ahead of us are much bigger fights. We and our Allies will go into them as we went into Sicily - together. And we shall carry on together.

Today our production of ships is almost unbelievable. This year we are producing over nineteen million tons of merchant shipping and next year our production will be over twenty-one million tons. And in addition to our shipments across the Atlantic, we must realize that in this war we are operating in the Aleutians, in the distant parts of the Southwest Pacific, in India, and off the shores of South America.

For several months we have been losing fewer ships by sinkings, and we have been destroying more and more U-boats. We hope this will continue. But we cannot be sure. We must not lower our guard for one single instant.

An example -- a tangible result of our great increase in merchant shipping -- which I think will be good news to civilians at home -- is that tonight we are able to terminate the rationing of coffee. And we also expect (that) within a short time we shall get greatly increased allowances of sugar.

Those few Americans who grouse and complain about the inconveniences of life here in the United States should learn some lessons from the civilian populations of our Allies -- Britain, and China, and Russia -- and of all the lands occupied by our common enemy (enemies).

The heaviest and most decisive fighting today is going on in Russia. I am glad that the British and we have been able to contribute somewhat to the great striking power of the Russian armies.

In 1941-1942 the Russians were able to retire without breaking, to move many of their war plants from western Russia far into the interior, to stand together with complete unanimity in the defense of their homeland.

The success of the Russian armies has shown that it is dangerous to make prophecies about them -- a fact which has been forcibly brought home to that mystic master of strategic intuition, Herr Hitler.

The short-lived German offensive, launched early this month, was a desperate attempt to bolster the morale of the German people. The Russians were not fooled by this. They went ahead with their own plans for attack -- plans which coordinate with the whole United Nations' offensive strategy.

The world has never seen greater devotion, determination and self-sacrifice than have been displayed by the Russian people and their armies, under the leadership of Marshal Joseph Stalin.

With a nation which in saving itself is thereby helping to save all the world from the Nazi menace, this country of ours should always be glad to be a good neighbor and a sincere friend in the world of the future.

In the Pacific, we are pushing the Japs around from the Aleutians to New Guinea. There too we have taken the initiative -- and we are not going to let go of it.

It becomes clearer and clearer that the attrition, the whittling down process against the Japanese is working. The Japs have lost more planes and more ships than they have been able to replace.

The continuous and energetic prosecution of the war of attrition will drive the Japs back from their over-extended line running from Burma (and Siam) and the Straits Settlement and Siam through the Netherlands Indies to eastern New Guinea and the Solomons. And we have good reason to believe that their shipping and their air power cannot support such outposts.

Our naval and land and air strength in the Pacific is constantly growing. And if the Japanese are basing their future plans for the Pacific on a long period in which they will be permitted to consolidate and exploit their conquered resources, they had better start revising their plans now. I give that to them merely as a helpful suggestion.

We are delivering planes and vital war supplies for the heroic armies of Generalissimo Chiang Sai-shek, and we must do more at all costs.

Our air supply line from India to China across enemy territory continues despite attempted Japanese interference. We have seized the initiative from the Japanese in the air over Burma and now we enjoy superiority. We are bombing Japanese communications, supply dumps, and bases in China, in Indo-China, in (and) Burma.

But we are still far from our main objectives in the war against Japan. Let us remember, however, how far we were a year ago from any of our objectives in the European theatre. We are pushing forward to occupation of positions which in time will enable us to attack the Japanese Islands themselves from the North, from the South, from the East, and from the West.

You have heard it said that while we are succeeding greatly on the fighting front, we are failing miserably on the home front. I think this is another of those immaturities -- a false slogan easy to state but untrue in the essential facts.

For the longer this war goes on the clearer it becomes that no one can draw a blue pencil down the middle of a page and call one side "the fighting front" and the other side "the home front." For the two of them are inexorably tied together.

Every combat division, every naval task force, every squadron of fighting planes is dependent for its equipment and ammunition and fuel and food, as indeed it is for its manpower, dependent on the American people in civilian clothes in the offices and in the factories and on the farms at home.

The same kind of careful planning that gained victory in North Africa and Sicily is required, if we are to make victory an enduring reality and do our share in building the kind of peaceful world that (which) will justify the sacrifices made in this war.

The United Nations are substantially agreed on the general objectives for the post-war world. They are also agreed that this is not the time to engage in an international discussion of all the terms of peace and all the details of the future. Let us win the war first. We must not relax our pressure on the enemy by taking time out to define every boundary and settle every political controversy in every part of the world. The important thing -- the all-important thing now is to get on with the war -- and to win it.

While concentrating on military victory, we are not neglecting the planning of the things to come, the freedoms which we know will make for more decency and greater justice throughout the world.

Among many other things we are, today, laying plans for the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed services. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment, to a place on a bread line, or on a corner selling apples. We must, this time, have plans ready -- instead of waiting to do a hasty, inefficient, and ill-considered job at the last moment.

I have assured our men in the armed forces that the American people would not let them down when the war is won.

I hope that the Congress will help in carrying out this assurance, for obviously the Executive Branch of the Government cannot do it alone. May the Congress do its duty in this regard. The American people will insist on fulfilling this American obligation to the men and women in the armed forces who are winning this war for us.

Of course, the returning soldier and sailor and marine are a part of the problem of demobilizing the rest of the millions of Americans who have been (working and) living in a war economy since 1941. That larger objective of reconverting wartime America to a peacetime basis is one for which your government is laying plans to be submitted to the Congress for action.

But the members of the armed forces have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and they are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems.

The least to which they are entitled, it seems to me, is something like this:

First (1.) Mustering-out pay to every member of the armed forces and merchant marine when he or she is honorably discharged, mustering-out pay large enough in each case to cover a reasonable period of time between his discharge and the finding of a new job.

Secondly (2.) In case no job is found after diligent search, then unemployment insurance if the individual registers with the United States Employment Service.

Third (3.) An opportunity for members of the armed services to get further education or trade training at the cost of the government.

Fourth (4.) Allowance of credit to all members of the armed forces, under unemployment compensation and Federal old-age and survivors' insurance, for their period of service. For these purposes they ought to (should) be treated as if they had continued their employment in private industry.

Fifth (5.) Improved and liberalized provisions for hospitalization, for rehabilitation, for (and) medical care of disabled members of the armed forces and the merchant marine.

And finally (6.), sufficient pensions for disabled members of the armed forces.

Your Government is drawing up other serious, constructive plans for certain immediate forward moves. They concern food, manpower, and other domestic problems that (but they) tie in with our armed forces.

Within a few weeks I shall speak with you again in regard to definite actions to be taken by the Executive Branch of the Government, together with (and) specific recommendations for new legislation by the Congress.

All our calculations for the future, however, must be based on clear understanding of the problems involved. And that can be gained only by straight thinking -- not guess work, not (or) political manipulation.

I confess that I myself am sometimes bewildered by conflicting statements that I see in the press. One day I read an " authoritative" statement that we will (shall) win the war this year, 1943 -- and the next day comes another statement equally "authoritative," that the war will still be going on in 1949.

Of course, both extremes -- of optimism and pessimism -- are wrong.

The length of the war will depend upon the uninterrupted continuance of all-out effort on the fighting fronts and here at home, and that (The) effort is all one.

The American soldier does not like the necessity of waging war. And yet -- if he lays off for a (one) single instant he may lose his own life and sacrifice the lives of his comrades.

By the same token -- a worker here at home may not like the driving, wartime conditions under which he has to work and (or) live. And yet -- if he gets complacent or indifferent and slacks on his job, he too may sacrifice the lives of American soldiers and contribute to the loss of an important battle.

The next time anyone says to you that this war is "in the bag," or says (and) "it's all over but the shouting," you should ask him these questions:

"Are you working full time on your job?"

"Are you growing all the food you can?"

"Are you buying your limit of war bonds?"

"Are you loyally and cheerfully cooperating with your Government in preventing inflation and profiteering, and in making rationing work with fairness to all?"

"Because -- if your answer is 'No' -- then the war is going to last a lot longer than you think.

The plans we made for the knocking out of Mussolini and his gang have largely succeeded. But we still have to knock out Hitler and his gang, and Tojo and his gang. No one of us pretends that this will be an easy matter.

We still have to defeat Hitler and Tojo on their own home grounds. But this will require a far greater concentration of our national energy and our ingenuity and our skill.

It is not too much to say that we must pour into this war the entire strength and intelligence and will power of the United States. We are a great nation -- a rich nation -- but we are not so great or so rich that we can afford to waste our substance or the lives or our men by relaxing along the way.

We shall not settle for less than total victory. That is the determination of every American on the fighting fronts. That must be, and will be, the determination of every American here at home.

Over 30,000 residents of Hamburg were killed on the RAF night raid on Hamburg, which we already noted yesterday.

British Communist Party member Douglas Springhill was sentenced to seven years in prison for something akin to espionage.  The presiding judge was careful not to suggest the Soviet Union as the client.

President Roosevelt ended the rationing of coffee.

Ingvar Kamprad, age 17, formed IKEA.

Addendum:

Shoot, I missed some big ones today that Sarah Sundin caught.

Today in World War II History—July 28, 1943

Palermo's harbor opened up for Allied shipping.

P-47s escorted US bombers all the way to Germany and back, the first time they'd done so and the first time Allied fighters had done so.  Drop tanks made that possible.

The Case Against Travel.

That's the title of an article in the current issue of The New Yorker.  It's available online, and it's brilliant.

I'm in that category of people who don't like traveling.  I like it in the abstract, but in the reality not so much.  When travel is approaching, I frankly dread it.

This is a bit ironic for a person who has traveled as much as I have.  I've been to three foreign countries, a minor number by real traveler standards, and a large number of the States.  Having said that, since graduating from college, all of my travel to foreign countries has been work related in some sense.  And prior to that, every trip out of the country, in those cases all to Canada, were to visit relatives, save for one.

The ironic thing is that I generally don't mind traveling when I am traveling.  The article itself taps into why. Travel for work is not vacation travel, so there's nothing, if you will, artificial about it.  Vacation travel can be artificial, although unlike the author of this article not all of it is.  I could imagine living a life in retirement in which I traveled with my spouse and dog in our trailer to hunt and fish, perhaps going all the way up to Alaska, but that's also a bit different.  It's more like being a nomad, which our species once was universally.

A friend of mine loves traveling, and given the traveling that he does, I have a sneaking suspicion that the day will arrive at which he wants to retire and that retirement will have been delayed, some of his retirement money having been spent on travel to far distant places.  He's invited me on trips more than once, and I've always declined.  "Don't you want to see the Holy Land?".  No, I don't.  "Don't you want to see Rome?" Well, if I was in Italy, I'd go to Rome, but I'm not going to make it a purpose destination.

Travel for work. . . or for study, and study can be one's own personal studies, is different.  That's noted in here as well.  

It's refreshing to read somebody who gets it.

I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places. . . . The idea of travelling nauseates me. . . . Ah, let those who don’t exist travel! . . . Travel is for those who cannot feel. . . . Only extreme poverty of the imagination justifies having to move around to feel.

Fernando Pessoa

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.

Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.  

Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.

O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon.  I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression".  In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death.  The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.

Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician.  Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States.  That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order.  She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.

A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success.  Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop.  The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.

By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome.  She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs.  The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality.  Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.

She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.

The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.

O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it.  There are a lot of people in that category.  With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered.  But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.

She also stands, however, for something additional.  Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them.  O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years.  Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open.  And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same.  Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.

Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs.  In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered.  Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.

That's the modern way, however.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 

and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May she rest in peace. 

Saturday, July 28, 1923. President Harding falls ill.

President Harding cancelled visits to Oregon and Yosemite National Park as he was ill with what was believed to be ptomaine poisoning.  He remained in bed in a special locomotive car.  

Secretary of the Interior Herbert Work did address a crowed at Grants Pass, Oregon, stating:

It comes about that during our last day at sea many of us were attacked by a temporary indisposition, not due to seasickness but to food put up in a can. I will not say what the item of food was, for thereby I might depress the value of the canned product.

The Tribune noted that Harding was on board the train, but as this was likely a morning edition, it didn't report his illness.  This was not the case everywhere.

The mystery of a radio mystery revealed (see comments).

 

1963 CB Walkie Talkie for Junior

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Sons of Mary 2023

Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Sons of Mary 2023: With the July heat starting to set in, the boys and I headed for the hills. Each summer, our band of brother priests, gets together for some...

Some random musings. Old Age, Worn Out Horses, Secrets.

The freeze

What happened to Mitch McConnell yesterday and to me 35 years ago.

ROBERT REICH

An insightful article by Robert Reich, who experienced something similar.

While I'm sure that I'm beating a dead horse on this, this is yet again evidence that we do come with a wear out date, and we ought to accordingly be careful.  So should society.  A huge amount of our societal deposit of power is in the truly ancient.

Mind you, I don't agree with Reich on much of McConnell's record being repugnant.  He did a great job, in my view, with the Supreme Court.  That's one of the things that Reich now doubt feels is skunking up the room.  And by this point, McConnell's presence may truly be necessary as a brake on what would occur if Donald Trump regains the White House, as McConnell seems to be able to control Senate Republicans, which in part has kept the Senate from becoming the circus that the House of Representatives currently is.

McConnell is 81.

Our senior Senator is 71.  Our junior Senator is 68.  Our Congressman is 60.

The world is enduring a really hot summer this year.  This is hard to ignore.

Sixteen young Montanans have sued their state for embracing fossil fuels in the face of climate change.  Nothing like that has happened in Wyoming.  I don't know what the average Wyomingite under 30 feels about this issue, or believes about it, but I'll bet it's not the same for Wyomingites who are 60 and over.  We probably worry about it, if we do, in the context of our children and their children.  Of course, if you are our youngest member of Congress, which isn't to say young, you have no children to worry about.

It used to be wars that caused this sort of observation.  Old men started them, it was claimed, and young men fought them.  Now it seems that really old men start them and young men and women, given that we've grown more barbarous in recent decades and included women in this horror, fight them.  The "old men" of the 1940s mostly weren't all that old, in comparison to what we have now.  Anyhow, I really wonder what approach to many things we'd be taking if people who were at least under 50 years of age were at the wheel.

Would that this was so.

On a somewhat related item, I've really been noticing recently that collapses that should be obvious to those close to collapsing aren't, at least to some extent.  I guess if people have relied upon somebody for a long time, they'll just ride that horse until it collapses, and then they're surprised.  Even the warnings that the metaphorical horse gives, as it stumbles or becomes blurry eyed, don't mean much.  The horse is just whipped into carrying on.  When it rolls over and dies, the rider is surprised.

I've been noticing recently that certain people turn everything very much to themselves.

Maybe everyone does to some degree.  People are told a story, and they want to show it's relevant to them as well, so they tell something related.

That's not really what I mean.

Rather, because for most of us our own frustrations and sufferings are the ones we really understand, it's hard for some not to use those as an absolute yardstick.

Indeed, I've witnessed recently somebody who fits into the category above, they're heavily burdened and collapsing, and they're pretty much trying to get some support.  However, when they seek to get it, they instead get tales, mostly repeats, of the other persons' frustrating, but not really epic, work life.  While it would be a poor comparison, it would be like a person going into the emergency room and telling the receptionist that they have a gunshot wound, only to get a really detailed reply like "I know, let me tell you about how slow the lunch line is here".

In this case, the suffering soul is pretty much the plow mule for the household, and the mule is on its last legs.  It's pretty obvious, but it must not actually be within the household, or they're so used to it, it goes unobserved.  But the signs are sure there.  The collapse is coming, and I don't know how to stop it.  Only the people driving the mule probably can, and they don't seem to believe it's going to happen.

Of course, it's really hard to appreciate that giants fall.  Some big tree grows in the forest, and It's always there.  It gets old, starts to die, and then one day a windstorm comes by and knocks it over.  People are surprised until they look at the photos of it when it was in its vigor.

Some people are horrible about keeping secrets.

I don't mean that they can't keep them, I mean that they love secretes too much.

There are things in the world that need to be kept secret.  Some occupations have secret keeping as a feature of their nature, such as doctors, priests, and lawyers.

But other people just adore secrets. They make secret information solely for the sake of making it secret.

My long-suffering spouse is one of these people.  She loves secrets.

I was reminded of this recently as I have a medical procedure coming up.  It's not a secret, why would it be?  But she was keeping it a secret from her family. That's really nifty, of course, for me as I don't keep stuff like this secret at all, and I don't have any concept why a person would do that.  Of course, it caught up with me when I was texting to my father-in-law, as he was at a cattle sale.  I mentioned it as I thought he knew.  My mother-in-law was calling in an instant, to my wife.

Why was this a secret?

I don't know, but that was bullshit, and I have repeatedly told my wife that I hate this "this is a secret" crap.  It's so ingrained in her character, however, that it's impossible to break.  Minor routine information is secret to outside parties.

This is aided by the fact, however, that she's good at keeping secrets, a fact that's further aided by her being bad at conveying necessary information.  I'll often get really important news about somebody weeks after it's conveyed to her.

"Bob is dying of the Grip", I'll learn. Oh, when did we learn this?  Weeks ago.

Or, "don't forget, this weekend we're hauling cattle".  Eh?  I've already committed myself to working this weekend, when did you learn this?  Yeah, weeks ago.  "I forgot to tell you".

On the other side, I guess, I've come to absolutely detest secrets.  Only things that legitimately need to be kept secret.  I guess having lived a life of professionally keeping secrets, while watching lots of people keep stuff they shouldn't keep secret until it blows up in their face, has made me detest them.   

Oh, well.

Friday, July 27, 1973. Operation End Sweep Ends

Operation End Sweep, the de-mining of North Vietnam's waters by the U.S. Navy, came to an end after having been underway since February.

Carol Tipton became the first woman to graduate from the Toledo police force training cycle as a conventional, rather than separate female, policeman.  Female police officers were very rare in the US, and indeed everywhere, until the 1970s.

Tuesday, July 27, 1943. Storms.

Major Joseph Duckworth, together with Lt. Ralph O'Hair, of the U.S. Army Air Force flew an AT-6 into the eye of a hurricane, becoming the first people to do so on purpose.

Duckworth was an advocate for training on instruments.  He had been an Army Air Corps flyer, originally starting in 1927, and recalled to service during World War Two.

The hurricane bore the name The Surprise Hurricane due to weather censoring during World War Two, which the storm would end due to killing 19 people and causing $17,000,000 in damage.

Croatia became a republic, for a time, after Prince Aimone, the Duke of Astsoria, who had been made king of Croatia by Mussolini, resigned, deciding that desertion was the better part of valor.

The Fascist Grand Council and the Fascist Party were abolished.

Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—July 27, 1943: Flight nurse Lt. Ruth Gardiner (805th MAETS) is killed in a plane crash in Naknek, Alaska; the first US Army nurse to die in WWII.

She also notes the horrific Hamburg firestorm of the night of July 27, 1943, which resulted from the RAF's Operation Gomorrah bombing raid that evening.

Unloading a P-47 at Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Friday, July 27, 1923. Casper living on Tulsa Time?

The analogy wasn't as wacky as it might seem.  

I've been to Tulsa, FWIW, and I don't dislike it. A typical Midwestern city.

Or perhaps more accurately an Oklahoma, north Texas city.

I would not care to live there, mind you, but Tulsa is not a bad city.

Courthouses of the West: Tulsa Municipal Building, Tulsa Oklahoma:

This is the Tulsa, Oklahoma Municipal Building which housed Tulsa's government between 1917 and 1960.  While I'm not certain that it housed a courthouse, it has that appearance, and I strongly suspect that the city's municipal courthouse was located here.  This building no longer houses Tulsa's city offices.

President Harding arrived in Seattle and gave a speech at the University of Washington's Husky Stadium.  

It would be his last.

FWIW, I have not been to Seattle, save for McChord AFB, and only briefly.

The Republican Party, anticipating another speech, announced that Hardin's speech from San Francisco, scheduled for July 31, would be broadcast nationwide on the radio.

The Federal Archives list these photos of a Martin MS-1 that the Navy was experimenting with.  The concept was to carry the biplane on a submarine, something that proved viable, and while the U.S. Navy gave up on it by World War Two the Japanese did not.

The Imperial Japanese Navy would, in turn, use submarine born monoplanes to attack the U.S. West Coast, albeit with no success.